You might not know this Fleetwood Mac hit from the title, but you’re bound to recognize the melody, written by Stevie Nicks. Black Shakespeare is an L.A. reggae band, and this track is smooth and tasty as hell.

Available on the Ubiquity label’s “Rewind! 5” compilation. Downloadable from iTunes and eMusic.

17 comments:

I'm gonna have to mosey on over to iTunes for that "Dreams" cover later! :-D

Some time ago I came across "The Persuasions Sing U2." (It's still on my wishlist.) They cover The Beatles as well.

Speaking of the Fab Four, there's Aretha Franklin's cover of "Eleanor Rigby." And Earth Wind & Fire's version of "Got to Get You into My Life." When it first came out, I remember being in the school library and overhearing these Beatles fans trash the RnB version.

Oh! And I really like Sarah Vaugh's version of Henry Mancini's "Peter Gunn."

Regarding black artists covering the Stones...there's a CD called "All Blues'd Up" that has artists like Gatemouth Brown, Junior Wells, and Joe Louis Walker covering their songs. It's actually a series of CDs that also includes blues artists (mostly black) covering the songs of Dylan, Clapton, and Janis Joplin.

This is sort of off-topic -- except as music being a bridge between black and white cultures -- but did you happen to see the PBS special on Stax Records last week? I always loved the label's music but didn't know a lot of the background. Pretty interesting.

Since the Beatles and The Rolling Stones have both been mentioned, I thought I would give a shout-out for Otis Redding, who covered "Day Tripper" and "Satisfaction." "Day Tripper" is OK, but "Satisfaction" gets the real Otis Redding treatment. While they may not be the best covers of those songs, any song that features the playing of Booker T. & The MG's can't be all that bad.